2019 | The Everyday of Age – Drawing my Grandmother’s Portrait

Laura Lux on Livre d’heures – Book of Hours, talk

… All these everyday gestures, I see her perform today, transport me straight away back to the way she cut my apples when I was a child. At the end of the film, I believe we are left with the insight that painting a grandmother’s portrait is also painting a portrait of yourself in the discourse of times – past and present – and in the lineage of who we become as women in youth and in age.
The film opens, for me, with a search for identity following a girl dressed in white erring through the woods. These images are accompanied by troubled, dissonant voices marking the search for clarity of thought sought in the encounter with nature. Then, we cut to the first image of “Bomi”’s hands holding her crutches moving slowly forward with cautious steps. The colours from the first images of the girl in the woods are marked by flowery yellows and fresh greens, which then switch to dark browns and earthy greens in the kitchen;…READ MORE

2019 | Controlling Time

Tracy Heindrichs on Livre d’heures – Book of Hours, talk

At first, it seems like Book of hours revolves around the relationship between two atypical flatmates – Bomi and Suzan – and Suzan’s reluctance to follow Bomi’s traditions. But I would argue that this film also contemplates the idea of time. Time is interpreted in different ways here: first, time seems to be a generational thing, with Bomi representing the traditional ways of embracing time and living alongside nature, and Suzan the millennial approach to time as a controllable personal resource. However, if Bomi and Suzan are considered to be the same person,… READ MORE

2019 | Medieval Contemplation Practices and Contemporary Echoes

Sonja Kmec on Livre d’heures – Book of Hours, talk

Suzan Noesen has entitled her projection « Livre d’heures », « Book of hours », which has a strangely old fashioned, out‐dated and somewhat mysterious ring.
Nowadays, books tend to be seen as obsolete remnants of an bygone, analog world. For instance the University Library in Belval is not to be called »Library » but « Luxembourg Learning Center », and the National Library is also promoting the usage of e‐books, that is, digital versions of items known as books or digital‐born products, to console their readers (or should one say « users »)… READ MORE

2017 | A Brief History of the Concept of Sensibility

Alexandra Ivanova for Sensibility as Media, essay

…, the concept of sensibility could be understood as an outstanding aesthetic capacity, turning parts of the human body to leading factors in gaining information that differs from information for sheer rational analysis. Perceiving the world by smelling, seeing, tasting it, by hearing, by touching it addresses and produces feelings that allow a deeper response to the materiality of the surrounding. Perceiving the world with all senses instead of only one promises richness of sensation (something advertisement companies have discovered long ago). Also, we might think of sensibility as categorially separated from knowledge, thoughts, or understanding. The more we might wonder, why and how sensible became an English synonym for reasonable. Maybe there was a time when the line between feeling and reason was not as defied and firm – as we are used to, nowadays… READ MORE